


rinse. repeat.

by bonebo



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blackwatch Genji Shimada, Gen, References to surgeries and hospitals and such
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 17:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10576185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonebo/pseuds/bonebo
Summary: He wakes up blind, in a body no longer his own, halfway around the world from the home he used to have.





	

He wakes up blind, in a body no longer his own, halfway around the world from the home he used to have.

The first thing he feels is pressure, at the base of his skull--fingers, sharp like knives against the hypersensitive synthetic flesh two shades too pale to match his skin tone, and the only thing that stops the knee-jerk panic is that they are, by now, familiar. Slender fingertips, gentle contact, tipped by trimmed nails.

Angela.

“We’re taking you to the operating room to fix your eyes, Genji.” Her voice is soft, almost lost in the hiss of decompression as she unplugs the hose that feeds pure oxygen into his lungs--getting enough oxygen to keep his body satisfied and run the cybernetics is a struggle, on room air. Angela’s already talked to him about the surgery he’ll need to fix that. 

There’s two more clicks, as his other lines as disconnected--he’s taken off the machine that sits behind his headboard and filters waste out of his blood-coolant, and blinks hard against the sudden rush of nausea that rushes to greet him, like it will help. Like it’s helped the last ten times, or the ten times before that.

He has no kidneys, anymore, and can’t leave his filtering machine for more than a day. Angela told him there’s a surgery to fix that. 

“Hopefully, by tomorrow morning, you will be able to see again.”

_Hopefully._

Angela helps him into a wheelchair--as much as he will allow her to, anyway; helps with guiding little touches to his organic shoulder and fawning notes in her voice, until Genji slaps her hands away and snarls at her that _he can do it, goddammit_ \--and he digs the fingers of his left hand into the chair’s arm as he feels himself being moved, wheeled out of his room and away, struggling to keep the constant sickness that comes with motion in check.

He’s thrown up like this, once. He remembers it as a mess of blood and bile that ate away at the half-open wounds of his ruined mouth, a burning fire confined to his half-there jaw by the metal faceplate, and it’s a unique kind of agony that he never wants to experience again.

The path to the OR is a route he’s come to know well, in the--two months? Three?--that he’s been living here. After they turn a corner he feels a burst of sunlight warming what little skin he has left, and from that he knows they’re passing the large window just outside the SICU--where Genji had first had a bed, back in the days where awareness was fleeting and every conscious moment was a haze of pain.

Back when operations were ten-hour daily burdens; Overwatch’s head surgeons trying to figure out what could be salvaged of a body turned to wreckage, and how to take the first steps in a long road to recovery.

His nerves used to jitter at the thought of going under the knife--trusting his helpless body to another, to knives and staples and saws--but after the fourth operation the fear faded, and by the fourteenth he finds himself immune to it all. The only thing he still dreads is the whispers he hears, the stares he can feel on his skin, that have all become just as familiar as every twist and turn of the hallway.

_“Poor dear…”_

_“What happened to him?”_

_“He must be so brave.”_

Genji’s fingernails are brittle, like dry reeds. They crack and break against the wheelchair’s arm as he digs them further into the vinyl, but by the time he’s registered the pain his chair is being stopped.

“We’re here,” Angela tells him, like he doesn’t already know, like he can’t taste the antiseptic in the air and feel the change in temperature; but he clings to her voice, makes it louder, more important than the whispers that knock around in his head as he nods.

“We’re going to get you up onto the table, Genji--can you stand?”

 _No, not really_ \--his right leg, all cybernetic and new, still catches and clicks and is stubborn to Genji’s commands; while the left is perpetually on the verge of collapse, his natural muscles constantly fatigued from the weight of the metal enhancements grafted into his skin.

Angela should know that--there’s probably a surgery to fix it. But Genji doesn’t bother to tell her. 

Someone’s arms--much thicker than Angela’s, topped with coarse hair--brace Genji around his torso, and it takes all he has to keep the snarl in check as he’s lifted like a child, moved from chair to cold table. He slaps blindly at the air as soon as the foreign arms start to retreat, and snarls a dark note of victory when his nails rake down skin. 

It’s petty, his satisfaction in hearing the stranger curse, imagining the look of pain on their face; but it’s all he has left anymore, and he relishes it, clings tight to that one last scrap of control. 

Angela sighs--she’s disappointed, but not surprised. Not anymore. Genji scowls at her even as he’s pushed to lay down, as the cables hanging from the back of his head are swept to the side to let his skull lay flush against the table. 

“I’m starting your anesthesia now.” The only good thing about being riddled with hoses and tubing is that when he needs an injection, there’s no shortage of places to painlessly stick a needle. He thinks it’s far from a fair tradeoff, but it’s something. 

“Try to be still and calm, Genji. You should wake up in a few hours with a...new outlook, on life.”

Angela giggles at her own little pun, and if it wasn’t for the drug seeping through his veins like honey, keeping him held down against the table, Genji would rage at her for daring to turn his situation, his nightmare, into a joke. As it is, all he can do is snarl behind his faceplate as the dark reaches out for him with soft, cloying fingers, and--just like every time before--the last thing he sees is a flash of endless, icy blue before he’s pulled into the yawning abyss.


End file.
